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Last summer, the Westmoreland County Circuit Court Clerk Gwynne Chatham contacted the Library of Virginia concerning old marriage records that staff discovered in her office. After she read the title of one the records, it was clear that she had found the Westmoreland County Cohabitation Register. Ms. Chatham read the title of another group of records which proved to be the Westmoreland County Register of Children of Colored Persons.

As former local records archivist Sarah Nerney pointed out in a previous Out of the Box entry about Augusta County cohabitation registers, these “are among the most important genealogical resources for African-Americans attempting to connect their family lines back through the murky past to their enslaved ancestors.” The registers, which in the case of Augusta County dated from 1866, “provide a snapshot in time for the individuals recorded therein and provide a wealth of information that may otherwise be impossible, or at least very difficult, to uncover.”

The original Westmoreland County register pages were transferred to the Library of Virginia for conservation and scanning. A comparison of pictures taken before and after conservation reveals the improvements made to the time-damaged documents. Library of Virginia conservator Leslie Courtois dry cleaned the paper surfaces, flattened creases and crumpled edges, then repaired tears and losses with Japanese tissue and de-acidified the document. Both registers are now available digitally with searchable transcriptions. The addition of the Westmoreland registers brings to thirty-two the number of digitized cohabitation and children’s registers available on the Library of Virginia’s Cohabitation Register Digital collection found on Virginia Memory and Virginia Untold.

Before and After Conservation

Read the finding aids for the Westmoreland County Cohabitation Register and Register of Children of Colored Persons to learn more about these valuable records. The Library of Virginia is grateful to Ms. Chatham and her staff for discovering these registers and making them available to the public. The conservation and scanning of these records were made possible through the innovative Circuit Court Records Preservation Program (CCRP), a cooperative program between the Library of Virginia and the Virginia Court Clerks Association (VCCA), which seeks to preserve the historic records found in Virginia’s circuit courts.

 

–Greg Crawford, Local Records Program Manager

Greg Crawford

State Archivist & Director of Government Records Services

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